The Blog

This Burnt Tattie is 5’11 x 21 x 2 ½ is an adaptation of the Fat Fish.

It was the stand out board at all the shows – passersby seemed drawn to it as it was a nice fresh look. The board gets this aesthetic by literally setting fire to the blank before glassing with Entropy Resin!!! I can see this being a popular effect for future boards.

John Gassor chose to have a fully custom board. Through the whole build stage we discussed wood choice, shape and the fine details like nose and tail blocks. Here it is, the Gassor Original.

John picked the board up at the weekend of Boardmasters and before the maiden voyage we shared a bottle of bubbly at Watergate bay.

John was real stoked with the finished product and we even made a matching hand plane from the left over timber. The board is made from Paulownia and black walnut. The shape is a fun gun so it works well in waist to chest but comes alive when over head plus. It’s a 2 + 1 setup with glassed in CNC milled fins using the offcuts laminated together from the deck and bottom.

Well that was a busy couple of weeks! It all began back on the 7th of August at the Fistral Beach Bar for Boardmasters Festival. Having turned up to find our designated space filled with photography, we decided to improvise and set up a nice little pop-up shop on the balcony in the sunshine.

After speaking with the event organisers we were moved up to Watergate to the VIP bar tent. We set our exhibition up on the Thursday ready for it to kick off on Friday, you’ll probably be aware of this from our updates on Facebook.(more…)

It has been a busy couple of weeks up at the Driftwood logshop all in preparation of the busy August we have ahead of us. To kick off its Boardmasters this week, where we have an exhibition stand showing off our latest collection of handplanes and surfboards. Being in the new man cave has allowed us to up production so we hope we are as prepared as we can be. Check out the pictures showing some of the new wooden recruits we’ll be showing off at Boardmasters this week. (more…)

Chris has been busy trying to make our handplane straps even better. This new strap is made from cotton webbing which is a natural fibre, rather than the nylon that is commonly used which uses more chemicals to produce. It’s just as strong and we really like the colour that compliments the handplane’s natural look and feel.

Check out this trailer on Dave and Driftwood Surfboards. It’s got some footage from yesteryear back in the days of the shed, and gives you a little info on what we are about. Stay tuned for the full length documentary out soon. Big thanks to Liv Williams, the director, who is running some cool projects over at iliveextreme.com.

Last weekend we were fortunate enough to be invited over to the Royal Cornwall Show in Wadebridge. Big thanks to Duchy Timber and Kim Moor for letting us have a beautiful spot in the forestry section of the show.

We set up our stand with a backdrop of big hunks of timber being skilfully sculpted with a chainsaw and other big bits of kit machining all the local timber.

The weather was scorching and we had a very busy stand all day with lots of interest. We were showing off our new handplanes and they seemed to go down well, we lost count of how many times we explained they weren’t snow ploughs or flip flops! Anyway it was a successful day and towards the end we enjoyed a couple of ciders before heading home. Cedar, sun and cider…what more could you ask for.

It’s been about a month since we moved into the new workshop right next to Seabase in Treloggan Industrial Estate, Newquay. The workshop used to be one of Seabase’s shaping units so its fair to say it was a little dusty due to all that foam cutting!

The space is around 900 sq/ft and felt a lot bigger when we first moved in. We have been busy over the last month clearing everything out, painting, scrubbing and building our new ‘man cave’. We are nearly there now and even have a mezzanine to store all the that wood, fancy I know. She is shaping up nicely and now the machines are in its time to starting building boards.

Here are some pictures showing our progress. If your around the area pop up for a cuppa and check it out.

The time has come for Driftwood Surfboards to move out of Dave’s trusty garden shed in Redruth into a new purpose-built workshop in Newquay. It’s exciting times at Driftwood, but we thought we should have a little tribute to the shed that gave birth to most of the boards we have on this site at the moment. Many an hour and late night Dave has spent cooped up in the shed and considering it’s humble size, and the size of some of the boards he’s produced in there, its quite impressive.

Here are a couple of the best snaps we have of Dave and his beloved shed. Looking forward it’s ‘Out of the shed, into the workshop!’ Yeeeew!

Paulownia, known as the ‘tree of life’, is the perfect timber for surfboards as it is lightweight and strong, with good flex properties and does not rot in seawater. Managed correctly, it is said to be the strongest weight-to-strength timber available and the fastest growing hardwood.

Its been a rough year, in which Mother Nature has battered the world we live in: from the largest hurricane in history hitting America to Tsunamis in Japan and Earthquakes in New Zealand. Throughout all these disasters, Shelterbox has continued to give assistance where its needed, when its needed, day or night all around the globe.

I’m delighted to give a little to help such a great cause. I will be building a surfboard from a driftwood log washed up on Perranporth beach several years ago, along with some reclaimed cedar cladding from an aged building recently taken down in a Redruth school yard. Feel free to follow the board being built from scratch on this blog.

The board will be shaped by myself David Forsyth founder of Driftwood Surfboards. The board will finally be raffled with all proceeds donated to Shelterbox.

Stay tuned to find out what the finished boards look like once they’ve had a nice lick of glass…

“A stunning work of art and a functional surfboard created in the finest traditions of British craftsmanship. David Forsyth’s work would stand the test on a world stage.” Peter Robinson, founder of the Museum of British Surfing

The Escher board was designed and constructed by David Forsyth, the founder of Driftwood Surfboards. The board was made using a contemporary adaption of, the legendary surfing pioneer, Tom Blake’s water sled from the 1930’s. (more…)

We are very excited by our collaboration with well renowned shaper and friend of Dave’s, Nigel Semmens from Ocean Magic. We can offer a unique service at Driftwood Surfboards, that is you can order your favourite Ocean Magic shape and get in made in wood. We are working with a number of shapers to try and expand this and get more guest shapes made from timber.

When you see guest shapes on our website now you know what we are on about.